Halt nearly all aid operations

Norwegian Refugee Council says it has been forced to halt nearly all aid operations in Gaza during bombardment

Kareem Khadder and Jessie Gretener

The Norwegian Refugee Council has been forced to halt nearly all aid operations in Gaza “due to the bombardment, the chaos, and the panic,” said its secretary general, Jan Egeland.

The “pulverising of Gaza now ranks amongst the worst assaults on any civilian population in our time and age,” he said in a statement on Tuesday.

Egeland said there "must be accountability for those responsible for the killings, the torture, and the atrocities committed in Israel on October 7th." But he added that Israel’s "military campaign can in no way be described as 'self-defense,'" calling the situation in Gaza a "total failure of our shared humanity."

“Today, more than 750,000 people are crowded into just 133 shelters. Tens of thousands live on the streets of southern Gaza, where, under bombardment, they are forced to improvise basic shelters from whatever they can get hold of. The winter rains have arrived and so have infectious diseases, just as public health services have been utterly paralysed,” Egeland outlined, adding that members of the NRC in Gaza are now living on the streets — one of them with a 2-month-old baby.